Brief Overview

The API Connections page in the WalkMe Console for ActionBot is where you can manage your conversation's API connections. Here, you can view a list of your connections, run tests to ensure everything's working as expected, and even see which conversations are associated with each connection.

How It Works

The Connections page has a variety of features that will help you create and manage your connections. Let's review what it has to offer:

Tab Filters

Easily navigate and filter through your API connections with the following tabs:

• All: View all connections in the table, regardless of their status.
• Active: Filter the table to display only active connections that are successfully integrated and functioning.
• Missing credentials: Quickly identify connections that require credentials or authentication details to be provided.

These tab filters allow you to organize and focus on the connections that meet your specific needs, ensuring efficient management and troubleshooting.

Connection Anatomy

Let's review each of the columns and the overall anatomy of a connection. Going across the line from left to right, starting with the little dot (or warning symbol).

Connection status: This will be green if all of the credentials for the connection are filled out during creation. The dot will change to a warning symbol and the entire line will be yellow if the connection is missing credentials.

Connection name: This is the name of that you gave the connection when it was created

Authorization name: The authorization type chosen when creating the connection. An authorization can be used for multiple connections. Authorization options include: 

• • Basic auth
  • Bearer token
  • OAuth 2.0

  • IAS OIDC password + JWT Bearer SAP ONLY

  • IAS OIDC client_credentials SAP ONLY

Connected conversations: Click the icon to open a list of all conversations that use this connection.

Destination URL: The web address or endpoint where the API request is sent to or received from during bot conversations.

Test connection: Verify the functionality and connectivity of the API connection, ensuring smooth communication between your bot and external systems

Actions: Available actions include:

• Coming soon! Edit connection: Opens the Editor so the builder can navigate to the ActionBot Connections page
• Duplicate connection: Makes a duplicate of the connection
• Delete connection: Deletes the connection
  • Note that deleting connections effects all conversations this connections was added to

How to Create a Connection

Create a new API connection directly from the API Connections page on Console. Connections created in the Console will be added to the Editor so you can use them to build your conversations.

Step 1: Create and name the connection

1. Click Create new connection (the plus icon)
2. In the first step of the Create API connection popup, name the connection
   • You can name it whatever you want, we recommend giving it a name that represents the destination
3. Click Next

Step 2: Select or create authorization

Now you'll add the authorization for this connection, you can either create a new one or select an existing authorization. If you choose an existing authorization, then continue to step 3: Connect destination URL.

1. Select New authorization
2. In Authorization name, name the authorization (it can be whatever you want)
3. In Authorization type, select the required authorization type for the application you are connecting to.
   • The following types of authentication are supported:
     • No Authentication: Doesn't require any info
     • Basic Authentication: Requires user+password
     • Bearer Token: Require an authentication token. Note- when choosing Bearer token, you can choose to use the token of a previously defined salesforce connection
     • OAuth 2.0: Require client secret, access token and Client ID and allows you to define the scope of the connection

     • IAS OIDC password + JWT Bearer SAP ONLY : SAP's recommended flow. Requires an IAS token URL, client ID, client secret, resource, and the username and password of an IAS service user with the needed role — not an end user

     • IAS OIDC client_credentials SAP ONLY : Use when no service user is available. Requires an IAS token URL, client ID, client secret, and resource

4. Fill in the required fields for that authorization type
5. Add a header (if required by API owner)
6. Click Next

Step 3: Connect destination URL

1. Select the Request type provided by the API owner:
   •  GET
   • POST
   • DELETE
   • PUT
2. Add the Destination URL provided by the API owner
   • Destination URL may contain dynamic query parameters. To create a dynamic query parameter within a destination URL, wrap the string value with curly brackets. For example https://test.api/{production}/
   • Destination URL may also contain BBcode variables allowing users to map the dynamic URL parameters to the end-user responses or to use BBcode supported environment variables such as wm-data, cookies, and jquery
3. Add any additional headers required from the API owner
   1. Unlike authorization headers, which are utilized for every authorization instance, the headers added to the destination step serve the purpose of establishing a connection exclusively for this specific connection
4. Coming soon! Click Test to verify the URL is legal
   • Test responses will be either Successful or Failed
5. Click Create

How to Test a Connection

To test if your connection works:

1. In the table, go to the API connection you want to test
2. Click Test
3. The results of the connection will appear at the top of the page:
   • A green box with a success message means the connection was successful
   • A red box with a failure message means the connection failed

How to Edit a Connection

To edit a connection:

1. In the table, hover over the API connection you want to edit
2. Click the pencil icon to open the Editor
   • Refer to the Connections article for information about Connections in the Editor.

How to Duplicate a Connection

To duplicate a connection:

1. In the table, hover over the API connection you want to duplicate
2. Click the duplicate icon 
3. Done! Note that authentications aren't duplicated. So you'll need to edit the connections to add new authentications.

How to Delete a Connection

To delete a connection:

1. In the table, hover over the API connection you want to delete
2. Click the trash icon
3. A popup will appear informing you that deleting a connection that is associated with a conversation will break the conversation. We recommend unpublishing these conversations as they will no longer work after the connection is deleted.
4. If you are sure you want to delete, click Delete

Technical Notes

• An API call can take up to 6-8 seconds
• IDP authentication is required for each ActionBot call connection

• IAS OIDC password + JWT Bearer and IAS OIDC client_credentials authorization types work with SAP IAS only, not other OIDC providers

• The IAS OIDC authorization types run a two-request token exchange: an IAS token request, followed by a resource token request. The existing OAuth 2.0 type uses a single request

Known issues

• For the Resource field: Enter only the dependency name, for example SuFa. WalkMe automatically adds the urn:sap:identity:application:provider:name: prefix — entering it yourself will fail validation. Find the dependency name in the customer's SAP setup, under Application APIs, then Dependencies, then APIs, where API is set to sf_technical_access

Recording